Thursday, October 16, 2003

Realizing they can't get their way the AOW (Axis...) chooses instead the path of Pontius Pilate.

Russia, France and Germany have agreed they will give no extra aid to Iraq because a U.N. Security Council resolution on the country's future is still not adequate, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder says.

Schroeder told a news conference on Thursday after conferring in a three-way telephone conference with French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin that they had agreed to vote for the U.S. resolution because it showed some progress and for the sake of Security Council unity.

But he added: "The progress in our view is still not an adequate response to the situation on the ground in Iraq, and on those grounds, we do not see ourselves in a position to play a military role there...or to make a further material contribution beyond what has already been agreed."

Translation: Go ahead and do what you (USA) are already doing...just don't come asking any help from us."

Thanks guys...no help is the best we could hope for...at least you got out of our way.

The resolution confirms that for the time being the Coalition Provisional Authority will remain the over-arching power in Iraq, although it stresses that the transfer of sovereignty and government back to the Iraqi people will happen as soon as practicable.

The United Nations is promised a strengthened vital role in the political and economic reconstruction process, but only as circumstances, particularly security, permit.

Still missing is a clear timetable, with dates, for a transfer of power and anything like the more dominant role that the UN had sought.